May 05, 2007

Quick notes: The Cinco de Mayo edition

Celebrate my birthday today...thousands of Mexicans can't be wrong.

Deb tagged me to list "5 songs that knock my socks off." I might revise or elaborate, but here's a starting lineup. My choices are based entirely on "which songs do I get sucked into singing along to, at the top of my lungs, EVERY time I hear them?"

Sinnerman by Nina SimoneWaltz #2 by Elliott SmithEverything is Everything by Lauryn HillDeep Red Bells by Neko CaseSay It Ain't So by Weezer

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Yeah, it's a goofy list. So sue me! I'm the birthday girl.

For those in the DC area: next Sunday, MAY 13, from 6-8 PM, I'll be reading at Club Iota in Arlington, VA (2832 Wilson Blvd., #703 256-9275) with a great writer, Ellen Cole. An open mic will follow. I'll debut some of the revised NaPoWriMo poems and possibly, tap dance (depends on the crowd). Mothers are welcome; there's even a bar. How relevant the latter is to the former depends, of course, on your particular mother.

My most recent book is Count the Waves, a poetry collection published by W. W. Norton in 2015. My first collection, Theories of Falling, won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize; my second collection, I Was the Jukebox, won the Barnard Women Poets Prize. I am also the author of a memoir, Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From an Allergic Life, which doubles as a cultural history of food allergy. My prose has appeared in The Oxford American, the Washington Post Magazine, and the New York Times. I teach with the University of Tampa's low-residency MFA program. www.sandrabeasley.com